poetry analysis, edith södergran?

Answer 1

I thought it might help to provide one of the Sodergran's works in my answer (ideally, it would be more than one--especially if the purpose is to analyze the poet's writing in general--but I digress), and took the liberty of pasting "My Soul" below:

My soul can tell no tales and knows no truths,
my soul can only cry and laugh and wring its hands;
my soul cannot remember and defend,
my soul cannot consider or approve.
As a child I saw the sea: it was blue.
In my youth I met a flower: she was red.
Now a stranger sits by my side: he is colorless,
but I fear him no more than the virgin feared the dragon.
The knight came upon the virgin, red and white,
but I have dark rings under my eyes.

First of all, when approaching poetry, there are several things to take into consideration; or else leave out of consideration, as proves useful to its analysis. To start, I always focus on the first thing telling my brain, "What I'm reading at is a poem"--that is, the way it looks on the page. Truly, "What makes a poem an actual poem?" is a question (it was in my experience studying literature) that many teachers and professors like to ask. Considering the poem above, the grammar is all correct; there are no mechanical errors; and if you stretched it out to look like pros, it would BE pros. So, the most outstanding feature to characterize Sodergran's work as a poem is its structure. I emphasize structure because you might find that other poems are more overtly "poetic", and play with all sorts of devices, which are often less acceptable in other genres of fiction.

But it seems Sodergran does more than exploit the flexibility of form through poetry. Another stand-out aspect of "My Soul" is its deceptively simple language. I ask you: is "My Soul" particularly complex to read? There are no grand vocabulary words; no lengthy, divisive sentences; flat repetition of certain phrases and words. Why is that? What does the poet achieve, using an almost elementary style?

Next: who is the narrator? And what is he/she trying to say? The subject of narrator is sophisticated, indeed. Depending on your level of motivation, you might or might not want to explore this topic.

Most important of all, never lose sight of how the poem makes you feel. Despite what some believe, all poets try to evoke an emotional response from their reader. I’ll present this analogy: looking at a poem is like looking at a painting--it’s unlikely we can understand either one, at first glance. But we do have an intuitive response to certain words; colors often have this naturally arousing effect. And while artists further their expression with a variety of brush strokes, those might be compared to the selection of sounds in a poem. So, when you first read one of Sodergran’s works, were you sad, uplifted, angry, even confused? Our gut reaction to art is essential—sort of like compass, serving to guide you down the path of analysis.

I'm sorry if I didn’t give you what you were looking for, as far as specific "analysis" goes, but this is for a reason. I used to work at my College's tutoring center, as a Peer Writing Consultant. At the writing center, our central philosophy was to elevate the student's ability to think and write for themselves, which usually meant posing many, (hopefully) helpful questions; this is knowing full well that the student/client was perfectly capable of thinking and finding the answers on their own.

Nevertheless, I hope my submission to your question was helpful. Good luck with the Edith Sodergran analysis, and may you enjoy your time studying poetry. Personally, I found poetic discourse to be one of most meaningful parts of my education.

Answer 2

You're getting well ideas, however your predicament is rather methodological. Your decision procedure needs that you simply selected amongst poems you may have analyzed for that poem that yielded probably the most after evaluation. That turns out incorrect-footed march to me. Just take a poem from any released poet. Analyze it. End project. Should you discover that the poem is WEAK in its symbolism, its use of metaphor, its voice, and so forth. then that's the fruit of your evaluation. Do we examine handiest the most powerful poetry? We don't. We examine what lies at the dissection desk. Should we? How might we? Analysis is logically earlier to the comparison of 'evaluation-worthiness' your query supposes, is not it?

Answer 3

Here is also an article about Edith Södergran's poetry: http://www.octopusmagazine.com/issue06/html/recovery_project/goransson.html

Answer 4

Hey Gbgnjhy,

"Edith Södergran, a Swedish-speaking Finnish poet, was only 24 years old when in 1916 she published her first collection of poems, called Dikter (Poems). The contemporaneous critics called her ‘lnsane’ and her poetry ‘rubbish’, but today she is one of the most famous and appreciated poets in the Nordic countries, also and perhaps especially among young people. For example one of her poems is the most reproduced poem in school textbooks (Holm, 1993) and several female poets witness the importance of her poetry as a source of inspiration - Eva Dahlgren is one of them." 1

Answer 5

Here are a couple of sites - see below, please.